Bacterial quorum sensing in complex and dynamically changing environments

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Quorum sensing is a process of bacterial cell-to-cell chemical communication that relies on the production, detection and response to extracellular signalling molecules called autoinducers. Quorum sensing allows groups of bacteria to synchronously alter behaviour in response to changes in the population density and species composition of the vicinal community. Quorum-sensing-mediated communication is now understood to be the norm in the bacterial world. Elegant research has defined quorum-sensing components and their interactions, for the most part, under ideal and highly controlled conditions. Indeed, these seminal studies laid the foundations for the field. In this Review, we highlight new findings concerning how bacteria deploy quorum sensing in realistic scenarios that mimic nature. We focus on how quorums are detected and how quorum sensing controls group behaviours in complex and dynamically changing environments such as multi-species bacterial communities, in the presence of flow, in 3D non-uniform biofilms and in hosts during infection.

Related collections

Most cited references 79

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Quorum sensing: cell-to-cell communication in bacteria.

Christopher M Waters, Bonnie L Bassler (2005)

Bacteria communicate with one another using chemical signal molecules. As in higher organisms, the information supplied by these molecules is critical for synchronizing the activities of large groups of cells. In bacteria, chemical communication involves producing, releasing, detecting, and responding to small hormone-like molecules termed autoinducers . This process, termed quorum sensing, allows bacteria to monitor the environment for other bacteria and to alter behavior on a population-wide scale in response to changes in the number and/or species present in a community. Most quorum-sensing-controlled processes are unproductive when undertaken by an individual bacterium acting alone but become beneficial when carried out simultaneously by a large number of cells. Thus, quorum sensing confuses the distinction between prokaryotes and eukaryotes because it enables bacteria to act as multicellular organisms. This review focuses on the architectures of bacterial chemical communication networks; how chemical information is integrated, processed, and transduced to control gene expression; how intra- and interspecies cell-cell communication is accomplished; and the intriguing possibility of prokaryote-eukaryote cross-communication.

0 comments Cited 896 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Physiological heterogeneity in biofilms.

Philip Stewart, Michael J Franklin (2008)

Biofilms contain bacterial cells that are in a wide range of physiological states. Within a biofilm population, cells with diverse genotypes and phenotypes that express distinct metabolic pathways, stress responses and other specific biological activities are juxtaposed. The mechanisms that contribute to this genetic and physiological heterogeneity include microscale chemical gradients, adaptation to local environmental conditions, stochastic gene expression and the genotypic variation that occurs through mutation and selection. Here, we discuss the processes that generate chemical gradients in biofilms, the genetic and physiological responses of the bacteria as they adapt to these gradients and the techniques that can be used to visualize and measure the microscale physiological heterogeneities of bacteria in biofilms.

0 comments Cited 642 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Bacterial quorum-sensing network architectures.

Wai-Leung Ng, Bonnie Bassler (2009)

Quorum sensing is a cell-cell communication process in which bacteria use the production and detection of extracellular chemicals called autoinducers to monitor cell population density. Quorum sensing allows bacteria to synchronize the gene expression of the group, and thus act in unison. Here, we review the mechanisms involved in quorum sensing with a focus on the Vibrio harveyi and Vibrio cholerae quorum-sensing systems. We discuss the differences between these two quorum-sensing systems and the differences between them and other paradigmatic bacterial signal transduction systems. We argue that the Vibrio quorum-sensing systems are optimally designed to precisely translate extracellular autoinducer information into internal changes in gene expression. We describe how studies of the V. harveyi and V. cholerae quorum-sensing systems have revealed some of the fundamental mechanisms underpinning the evolution of collective behaviors.